Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

JACOB'S
JACOB'S 361
commencing from the bottom : Justice,
Equity, Kindness, Good Faith, Labor, Patience,
and Intelligence . The arrangement of
these steps, for which we are indebted to modern
ritualism, does not seem to be perfect ; but
yet the idea of intellectual progress to perfection
is carried out by making the topmost
round represent Wisdom or Understanding .
The Masonic ladder which is presented in
the symbolism of the First Degree ought really
to consist of seven steps, which thus ascend :
Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, Justice,
Faith, Hope, and Charity ; but the earliest
examples of it present it only with three, referring
to the three theological virtues whence
it is called the theological ladder . It seems
therefore, to have been settled by general
usage that the Masonic ladder has but three
steps .
As a symbol of progress, Jacob's ladder was
early recognized . Picus of Mirandola, who
wrote in the sixteenth century, in his oration,
"De Hominis Dignitate," says that Jacob's
ladder is a symbol of the progressive scale of
intellectual communication betwixt earth and
heaven ; and upon the ladder, as it were, step
by step, man is permitted with the angels to
ascend and descend until the mind finds
blissful and complete repose in the bosom of
divinity. The highest step he defines to be
theology, or the study and contemplation of
the Deity in his own abstract and exalted
nature .
Other interpretations have, however, been
given to it . The Jewish writers differ very
much in their expositions of it . Thus, a writer
of one of the Midrashes or Commentaries
finding that the Hebrew words for Ladder and
Sinai have each the same numerical value of
letters, expounds the ladder as typifying the
giving of the law on that mount . Aben Ezra
thought that it was a symbol of the human
mind, and that the angels represented the
sublime meditations of man . Maimonidea
supposed the ladder to symbolize nature in its
operations ; and, citing the authority of a
Midrash which gives to it four steps, says that
they represent the four elements ; the two
heavier, earth and water, descending by their
specific gravity, and the two lighter, fire and
air, ascending from the same cause. Abarbanel,
assuming the Talmudic theory that
Luz, where Jacob slept, was Mount Moriah,
supposes that the ladder, resting on the spot
which afterward became the holy of holies '
was a prophetic symbol of the building of the
Temple . And, lastly, Raphael interprets the
ladder, and the ascent and the descent of the
angels, as the prayers of man and the answering
inspiration of God. Fludd, the Hermetic
philosopher, in his Philosophia Mosaica
(1638), calls the ladder the symbol of the triple
world, moral, physical, and intellectual ; and
Nicolai says that the ladder with three steps
was, among the Rosicrucian Freemasons in
the seventeenth century, a symbol of the
knowledge of nature. Finally, Krause says,
in his drei altesten Kunsturkunden (ii ., 481),
that a Brother Keher of Edinburgh, whom he
describes as a skilful and truthful Mason, had
in 1802 assured the members of a Lodge at
Altenberg that originally only one Scottish
degree existed whose object was the restoration
of James h .
to the throne of England, and
that of that restoration Jacob's ladder had
been adopted by them as a symbol . Of this
fact he further said that an authentic narrative
was contained in the Archives of the
Grand Lodge of Scotland . Notwithstanding
Lawrie's silence on the subject, Krause is inclined
to believe the story, nor is it in all its
parts altogether without probability . It is
more than likely that the Chevalier Ramsay,
who was a warm adherent of the Stuarts,
transferred the symbol of the mystical ladder
from the Mithraic mysteries, with which he
was very familiar, into his Scottish degrees,
and that thus it became a part of the symbolism
of the Kadosh system . In some of the
political Lodges instituted under the influence
of the Stuarts to assist in the restoration of
their house, the philosophical interpretation
of the symbol may have been perverted to a
political meaning, and to these Lodges it is to
be supposed that Keher alluded ; but that the
Grand Lodge of Scotland had made any official
recognition of the fact is not to be believed.
Lawrie's silence seems to be conclusive
.
In the Ancient Craft degrees of the York
Rite, Jacob's ladder was not an original symbol
. It is said to have been introduced by
Dunckerley when he reformed the lectures .
This is confirmed by the fact that it is not
mentioned in any of the early rituals of the
last century, nor even by Hutchinson, who
had an excellent opportunity of doing so in his
lecture on the Nature of the Lode, where he
speaks of the covering of the Loge, but says
nothing of the means of reaching it, which he
would have done, had he been acquainted
with the ladder as a symbol . Its first appearance
is in a Tracing Board, on which the date
of 1776 is inscribed, which very well agrees
with the date of Dunckerley's improvements .
In this Tracing Board, the ladder has but
three rounds; a change from the old sevenstepped
ladder of the mysteries ; which however,
Preston corrected when he described it
as having many rounds, but three principal
ones .
As to the modern Masonic symbolism of the
ladder, it is, as I have already said, a symbol
of progress such as it is in all the old initiations
. Its three principal rounds, representing
Faith, Hope, and Charity, present us with
the means of advancing from earth to heaven,
from death to life-from the mortal to immortality
. Hence its foot is placed on the ground
floor of the Lodge, which is typical of the
world, and its top rests on the covering of the
Lodge, which is symbolic of heaven .
In the Prestonian lecture, which was elaborated
out of Dunckerle 's system, the ladder
is said to rest on the Holy Bible, and to reach
to the heavens. This symbolism is thus explained
"By the doctrines contained in the Holy